


of all stars the most beautiful

by ktlsyrtis



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/F, flagrant abuse of astronomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23678059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktlsyrtis/pseuds/ktlsyrtis
Summary: SPEAK, MEMORY—Of golden-haired Berenice,The sculptor, who moved the hearts of men,Though lonely was her ownSpeak, Immortal One,And tell the tale of the work of her mortal hands,Beauty enough to beguile Fair Aphrodite, andFind, at last, her Serenity
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 13
Kudos: 78





	of all stars the most beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> A collaboration that developed from my screaming girl crush on the amazing fan art of Tiffany Balagtas. You can find her incredible companion piece [Here](https://ravagerofworldsfanart.tumblr.com/post/615526779236564992/pygmalion-by-tiffanybalagtas-on-deviantart)
> 
> As in all things, thanks to Beth <3

“Which one is Ursa Minor?”

A small hand points up at the sky.

“There. The one that looks like a ladle.”

“Very good. And Ursa Major?”

The hand shifts over and down a bit, still pointing authoritatively.

“There. The big ladle.”

“Actually, it’s called the Big Dipper,” Jason says, shifting a bit on the blanket they’ve laid out in his aunt’s back yard. Beside him, Guinevere looks up intently, tongue caught between her teeth, studying the star filled sky.

Jason brings his hand up beside his daughter’s, guides them both straight down a few inches.

“You see those three stars?” He moves her small hand, finger tracing the shape. “They make a triangle.”

“What’s it called?”

“That’s the Coma Berenices. It means ‘Berenice’s hair’ in Latin.”

Guinevere turns to look at Jason, eyes sharp with curiosity even in the dark of the garden.

“Berenice? Like Auntie Bunny?”

Jason nods. “Except this Berenice was an artist, not a surgeon. At least according to the Greeks. Likely there was no Berenice, and it’s all just a story made up to explain the shapes people found in the stars.”

Guinevere nods her agreement. Jason supports his daughter’s new found interests in astronomy and mythology, but always feels it's important to remember that it’s a fiction created by people long ago.

“Tell me about her, Papa?”

They settle closer, shoulder to shoulder in the still night.

“Berenice wasn’t just any artist,” he begins. “She was the greatest sculptor in all of Greece. In fact, she made a statue so beautiful, Aphrodite herself brought it to life.”

~~~

In her time, Berenice of Knidos was a figure shrouded in speculation, set apart from other women because she lacked a husband, and spent her days in reclusive solitude. She was used to the stares and whispers that followed her when she descended from her home, tucked away in the mountains on the outskirts of the city, and did little to dispel the rumors. Instead, she wrapped them around her like a protective cloak. 

But no one could deny her talent.

At a young age, Berenice discovered a skill for working with stone, coaxing the formless blocks into the most pleasing sculptures, almost effortlessly. The townspeople murmur that her sculptures are only matched in beauty by Berenice herself, bright golden hair that shines in the sun.

God-touched, they say. A child of Aphrodite herself.

It lent her work a bit of mystery, a level of renown she sometimes feared was unearned. But it does allow her to live as she pleases, creating sculptures that adorn temples across all of Greece.

Fame and fortune may be enough for most, but increasingly Berenice found herself bored of her work. Not the process - she rarely felt more herself than when she was coaxing lifelike statues from unyielding stone with mallet and chisel - but the subjects. Her workshop was filled with likeness after likeness of the gods and goddesses, facades of senators and their wives, commissioned to be memorialized in stone. All with idealized forms and stern, distant faces, looking down haughtily.

Her work continued to be highly sought after, to garner acclaim, but Berenice’s heart was no longer in it.

The world was stunned when she announced she would take no more commissions from patrons, no requests from temples. Some even thought her mad.

With no patrons, no sponsorships, Berenice was finally alone in her workshop. It was then, standing before a block of purest ivory, that inspiration struck, her heart quickening in a way it hadn’t since she first picked up a chisel. For the first time, she decided not to create some distant ideal. She wanted to create something real.

Setting to with her tools, Berenice chipped away at the ivory, uncovering the form underneath, the one that existed only in her mind. The floor littered with dust and detritus as the figure slowly began to emerge.

Berenice worked like a woman possessed, barely took the time to eat or sleep as hard, unforgiving edges gave way to sensuous curves. When she did sleep, she rarely made it to her bed, instead curling up on a mat on the floor of the workshop, the lines of the statue the last thing she saw before her eyes closed each night.

Over days and weeks the sculpture took shape, becoming recognizable as a seated woman. Where in the past, Berenice would have smoothed and perfected the flaws in the material, she chose instead to incorporate them into the work, a newfound freedom in the lack of perfection. She spent countless hours working the details of wrinkles and folds into the stone flesh, preserving the marks and lines that spiderweb through the slab.

Nowhere was this new freedom more clear than in the face of her masterwork: No immortal, unreachable visage. Somehow Berenice imbued the unyielding stone with tenderness, a sense of a life well lived. With exquisite care she carves fine lines about the eyes, the hint of a smile in the curves that bracket the lips, a shadow of a dimple on the strong chin. Something about it gave a sense of reality suspended, a single moment frozen in time. As if at any moment, the woman would rise from her seat and walk out into the world.

Perhaps it was that sense of realism, Berenice thought, or perhaps madness had truly descended upon her, after so long shut away in her workshop. Whatever the reason, at the end of each day, after she set down her tools, she found herself talking to the statute, telling it things she never shared with another soul.

She wove tales of her parents, who thought sculpting was no fit occupation for a woman, no matter how talented. Of her struggles to be seen, to find others who were her equals. She spilled out her loneliness, whispered the secrets of her heart, of the women who have held it, into the darkness, and the candlelight flickering on the statue’s face seems to cast it in an expression of gentle understanding. The statue bore no name, but Berenice came to think of it as an object of serenity, the only place where the rest of the world fell away and she was truly at peace.

At long last, the final chip of stone fell to the floor, and Berenice stepped back, surveyed what she knew to be her masterwork. Satisfaction and a bit of melancholy filled her heart.

That night, Berenice was visited by a dream. 

A dove alit on the statue, a branch of myrtle in its beak. It dropped the flower in the statue’s outstretched hand and flew away, its wings clashing like golden chimes.

As Berenice watched, the statue’s stone fingers curled delicately around the flower, and she turned her head toward Berenice. Fathomless eyes met her own, and Berenice was overwhelmed with a surge of love so strong it drove her to her knees.

When she woke, the statue was as it had been: beautiful, lifeless stone. As she looked upon her work, Berenice was haunted by the dream, the feelings that still pulsed in her chest.

Realization washed over her that this was _her_ ideal woman, that every aspect, every choice, came from the well of longing buried deep in her heart. Chasing that realization was an unbearable tide of loneliness, one that she pushed away her whole life, pretended it never existed, and tears pricked at her eyes.

In that moment she understood with painful clarity that while the statue may look real, it’s just as false as all her other work. For it was just a block of unfeeling ivory, and could never return the warmth and care that Berenice poured into it.

Shame rose thick in her chest, that she’d been so foolish, so delusional, as to care for something that wasn’t real. 

Suddenly the walls of the workshop felt claustrophobic. Berenice grabbed her cloak and pinned it about her shoulders.

Pausing, she reached out to let her fingers linger against the curve of the statue’s cheek, flinching at the cold of the ivory.

“Oh, how I wish you were real,” she whispered, and fled into the dawn.

The sun was just dipping below the horizon when a hooded figure entered the workshop. Pausing before the statue, they pushed the folds of their cloak back from their face.

A rope of golden hair spilled down the woman’s back, the long rays of sunlight highlighting the perfection of her face. The room itself was brighter, somehow, as if she gave off her own light, enough that any mere mortal would have averted their gaze.

As the patron goddess of Love, Aphrodite knew of all its varied forms, the myriad ways that mortals could express that most human of emotions. As she studied the statue, the fineness of Berenice’s work, she saw the love there - passion for the craft, blended with the desires of Berenice’s heart to create a thing of pure beauty.

Indeed, Aphrodite could see the reflection of herself in the work, the truest face of Love.

“Ah, Berenice. May you know the same love that you have brought into the world.” Her voice thrummed through the room like chimes.

Delicately, Aphrodite pressed a kiss to the cold ivory lips of the statue. She turned to leave, not looking back as a faint flush of pink stained the place her lips touched.

Night had fallen by the time Berenice returned. For hours, she wandered the hills of Knidos, driven by the torment in her heart, raging against the gods for making her this way. When the anger passed, all that was left was sorrow, and she was barely able to lift her weary feet as she passed through the door.

A pillar of moonlight spilled over the statue, limning it in silver, rendering it impossibly more beautiful. But Berenice could find no joy in her success, her heart filled only with sadness and longing.

Exhausted, she slumped to her knees, draped over the statue’s base. Tears trickled down her cheeks, splashing against the cold stone.

Suddenly, she felt the gentlest of touches against her hair. Startled, Berenice looked up, only to find her creation looking back, a gentle smile on its lovely face.

Where before there had been pale, unyielding stone, there was soft flesh, imbued with the warmth of life, and dark eyes that sparkled with all the secrets of the universe.

“Do not cry, Berenice,” she said in a warm, husky voice, lifting Berenice’s chin with her fingertips. “You need not be lonely any longer.”

~~~

“The statue came to life,” Jason says, voice dropping to a dramatic whisper. “And though her name was lost to the ages, it’s said she never left Berenice’s side.”

“Really?” Guinevere’s eyes are wide as saucers, as she hangs on Jason’s every word.

“They fell deeply in love and lived happily together. And many years later, when Berenice died, Aphrodite set her among the stars so that no one would forget her, or their love.”

“Papa, can _I_ be a sculptor?”

“Not until you’re older.”

Serena dabs a bit at her eyes with the hem of her jumper where she stands in the shadow of the back doorway. She jumps, startled, barely biting back a yelp as strong hands come to rest on her hips.

“You’re going to give me a heart attack,” Serena grumbles, “scaring a woman of my age.”

Bernie snorts a little, resting her chin on Serena’s shoulder, breath warm against her neck.

“Gwen’s still on astronomy, then?”

“Mmmhmm.” Serena takes Bernie’s hands and pulls them up to wrap around her waist, sighing contentedly as she leans back into the warmth of her body. “I think he’s been telling her about you.”

“Me?”

“Well, your namesake, anyway. The talented recluse whose skills led her to the love of her life, and who was known for her golden hair.” Serena slides a hand up into said hair, now liberally threaded with white, and wraps a curl around her finger, tugging gently. “Sound like anyone you know?”

Bernie just hums, lips brushing the spot behind Serena’s ear, making her shiver.

“The love of her life, eh?” Bernie’s voice is low, thrumming through Serena. “Does that make you my masterpiece?”

“Maybe we’re more of a work in progress, darling,” Serena says, turning to kiss Bernie properly, right on her lips. “Things look squared up down here. Why don’t you take me upstairs and show me if you’re as good with your hands as the famous Berenice of Knidos.”


End file.
